Quotes from The Tales of Beedle the Bard

J.K. Rowling ·  109 pages

Rating: (338.2K votes)


“To hurt is as human as to breathe.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“No man or woman alive, magical or not, has ever escaped some form of injury, whether physical, mental, or emotional. To hurt is as human as to breathe.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“Clever as I am, I remain just as big a fool as anyone else.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“No witch has ever claimed to own the Elder Wand. Make of that what you will.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“Death comes for us all in the end.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard



“Magic causes as much trouble as it cures.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“Children being children, however, the grotesque Hopping Pot had taken hold of their imaginations. The solution was to jettison the pro-Muggle moral but keep the warty cauldron, so by the middle of the sixteenth century a different version of the tale was in wide circulation among wizarding families. In the revised story, the Hopping Pot protects an innocent wizard from his torch-bearing, pitchfork-toting neighbours by chasing them away from the wizard's cottage, catching them and swallowing them whole.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“This exchange marked the beginning of Mr. Malfoy's long campaign to have me removed from my post as headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort's Favorite Death Eater. My response prompted several further letters from Mr. Malfoy, but as they consisted mainly of opprobrious remarks on my sanity, parentage, and hygiene, their relevance to this commentary is remote.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“What must strike any intelligent witch or wizard on studying the so-called history of the Elder Wand is that every man who claims to have owned it has insisted that it is "unbeatable," when the known facts of its passage through many owners' hands demonstrate that has it not only been beaten hundreds of times, but that it also attracts trouble as Grumble the Grubby Goat attracted flies.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“The heroes and heroines who triumph in his stories are not those with the most powerful magic, but rather those who demonstrate the most kindness, common sense and ingenuity.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard



“And sure enough, in seeking to become superhuman this foolhardy young man renders himself inhuman. The heart that he has locked away slowly shrivels and grows hair, symbolising his own descent to beasthood.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“As the sun fell below the horizon, Sir Luckless emerged from the waters with the glory of his triumph upon him, and flung himself in his rusted armor at the feet of Amata, who was the kindest and most beautiful woman he had ever beheld. Flushed with success, he begged for her hand and her heart, and Amata, no less delighted, realized that she had found a man worthy of them.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“Powerful infatuations can be induced by the skilful potioneer, but never yet has anyone managed to create the truly unbreakable, eternal, unconditional attachment that alone can be called Love”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“Humans have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“My refusal to remove the book from the library was backed by a majority of the Board of Governors. I wrote back to Mr Malfoy, explaining my decision:

So-called pure-blood families maintain their alleged purity by disowning, banishing or lying about Muggles or Muggle-borns on their family trees. They then attempt to foist their hypocrisy upon the rest of us by asking us to ban works dealing with the truths they deny. There is not a witch or wizard in existence whose blood has not mingled with that of Muggles, and I should therefore consider it both illogical and immoral to remove works dealing with the subject from our students' store of knowledge.(4)

This exchange marked the beginning of Mr Malfoy's long campaign to have me removed from my post as Headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort's Favourite Death Eater.

(4)My response prompted several further letters from Mr Malfoy, but as they consisted mainly of opprobrious remarks on my sanity, parentage and hygiene, their relevance to this commentary is remote.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard



“Another notable difference between these
fables and their Muggle counterparts is that
Beedle’s witches are much more active in seeking their fortunes than our fairy-tale heroines. Asha, Altheda, Amata and Babbitty Rabbitty are all witches who take their fate into their own hands, rather than taking a prolonged nap or waiting for someone to return a lost shoe.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“Y entonces recibió a la Muerte como si fuera una vieja amiga, y se marchó con ella de buen grado. Y así, como iguales, ambos se alejaron de la vida.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“humans have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them. But”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“A simple and heart-warming fable, one might think - in which case, one would reveal oneself to be an innocent nincompoop.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“To hurt is as human as breathe.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard



“magic causes as much trouble as it cures. Another”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“Concibe el amor como una humillación, una debilidad, un despilfarro de los recursos emocionales y materiales de la persona.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“The kindest interpretation would be: 'Hope springs eternal.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.” Whether”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


“the bond between parent and child is the root from which all success, all well-being, grows. Although”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard



“El corazón que ha encerrado se marchita lentamente y le crece pelo, lo que simboliza su propio descenso a la animalidad. Al final queda reducido a una bestia violenta que obtiene lo que quiere por la fuerza, y muere en un vano intento de recuperar lo que ya está fuera de su alcance para siempre: un corazón humano.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from The Tales of Beedle the Bard


About the author

J.K. Rowling
Born place: in Yate, South Gloucestershire, England, The United Kingdom
Born date July 31, 1965
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“POLLARD had known better, but instead of pulling rank and insisting that his officers carry out his proposal to sail for the Society Islands, he embraced a more democratic style of command. Modern survival psychologists have determined that this “social”—as opposed to “authoritarian”—form of leadership is ill suited to the early stages of a disaster, when decisions must be made quickly and firmly. Only later, as the ordeal drags on and it is necessary to maintain morale, do social leadership skills become important. Whalemen in the nineteenth century had a clear understanding of these two approaches. The captain was expected to be the authoritarian, what Nantucketers called a fishy man. A fishy man loved to kill whales and lacked the tendency toward self-doubt and self-examination that could get in the way of making a quick decision. To be called “fishy to the backbone” was the ultimate compliment a Nantucketer could receive and meant that he was destined to become, if he wasn’t already, a captain. Mates, however, were expected to temper their fishiness with a more personal, even outgoing, approach. After breaking in the green hands at the onset of the voyage—when they gained their well-deserved reputations as “spit-fires”—mates worked to instill a sense of cooperation among the men. This required them to remain sensitive to the crew’s changeable moods and to keep the lines of communication open. Nantucketers recognized that the positions of captain and first mate required contrasting personalities. Not all mates had the necessary edge to become captains, and there were many future captains who did not have the patience to be successful mates. There was a saying on the island: “[I]t is a pity to spoil a good mate by making him a master.” Pollard’s behavior, after both the knockdown and the whale attack, indicates that he lacked the resolve to overrule his two younger and less experienced officers. In his deference to others, Pollard was conducting himself less like a captain and more like the veteran mate described by the Nantucketer William H. Macy: “[H]e had no lungs to blow his own trumpet, and sometimes distrusted his own powers, though generally found equal to any emergency after it arose. This want of confidence sometimes led him to hesitate, where a more impulsive or less thoughtful man would act at once. In the course of his career he had seen many ‘fishy’ young men lifted over his head.” Shipowners hoped to combine a fishy, hard-driving captain with an approachable and steady mate. But in the labor-starved frenzy of Nantucket in 1819, the Essex had ended up with a captain who had the instincts and soul of a mate, and a mate who had the ambition and fire of a captain. Instead of giving an order and sticking with it, Pollard indulged his matelike tendency to listen to others. This provided Chase—who had no qualms about speaking up—with the opportunity to impose his own will. For better or worse, the men of the Essex were sailing toward a destiny that would be determined, in large part, not by their unassertive captain but by their forceful and fishy mate.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, quote from In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex


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